That works great for regular guys. Not so great for the evil psychopaths who just don’t care what we try to teach them and will always be looking for people to victimize.

Balkanization isn’t a master plan of any thinker, it’s a natural process as people move to cut themselves off from those they strongly disagree with.

I think there is a strong argument to be made that Balkanization is the ultimate, if unintended, result of the US founding fathers’ plan. From the very beginning it was a deal with the devil: a compromise between factions — who ought to be bitter enemies — under threat from a superior foe (the British Empire).

The collapse really began to build steam after the last great foe, the Soviet Union, was defeated.

The whole idea of a treaty between these two is highly amusing to me. Basically as believable as a treaty between drug cartels.

That’s not where I thought you were going on that one!

Silent? No no no. The gaping hole makes loud chewing noises while the nostrils merily chat away in a sing-songy, whistly voice!

Starting with purity and remove curse identified is very much in character. Seems quite strong too, for smoothing out the early game.

I’m really excited to learn more about those spells. I love utility/defensive type characters in general!

I remember when imgur was such a great site that allowed deep linking. Now it’s total enshittified garbage!

I used the term “trad wife like” for a reason. Trad wives are a bit of a meme right now but they’re not the only group where women focus on household chores and raising lots of children. Amish and old order Mennonites, traditional Muslim families (my experience is with Somali families), Hasidic Jews, Mormons as well as lots of traditional Christian groups too.

“Far better deal” is debatable. Amish are pretty famous for offering their children the opportunity to leave and live a modern life among “the English” (their term for non-Amish). Very rarely do they actually follow through on it, as they have everything they need.

I volunteer at an after school homework club run by the local Somali community. I help Somali kids with their homework and have made friends with several people in their community. Their family structures are quite traditional and all of the kids have numerous siblings. They don’t avoid modern technology but their community is so close-knit that they strongly maintain their beliefs and practices.

We gave up a lot to have a culture that “offers a far better deal”: a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, a connection between the work we do and greater meaning (unlike so many bullshit jobs, when you grow your own food it feels immensely satisfying), large families with close kinship bonds to form a support network, even the help of older siblings helping to raise younger children. Many modern parents struggle tremendously just to raise 1-2 children simply because they’re on their own, with no support network.

Ahhh okay, but you’re not trying to argue that paramedics should be on bicycles or taking public transit! That was the thing that puzzled me.

I think we could avoid a lot of the issues with pedestrians and cyclists getting hit by motor vehicles by getting rid of stroads and properly designing cities to separate streets and roads.

Yeah exactly. Not having 3 grand is no obstacle for them to get you to lose 3 grand!

How many children with Christian parents grow up Muslim? How about vice versa? How many children of vegan parents grow up to be meat eaters? How about vice versa? How many children of Chinese parents grow up to stop celebrating Chinese new year or stop eating Chinese food?

Children are never guaranteed to follow their parents’ beliefs and cultural practices but they’re far more likely to follow them than they are to choose any other belief or practice to follow. This phenomenon is also heavily reinforced by region. How many leftist children of conservative parents choose to stay in their hometown in some rural area deep in a red state?

Moving far from home to go live in a big city due to educational and ideological differences is extremely common. However, raising children in an expensive city without the support of the grandparents and other extended family is much more difficult. I think this reinforces the birth rate trends among conservatives, even for those who do not claim to follow the trad wife movement.

Think about it long term though. If trad wives have lots of children and all other women don’t, the next generation will be over-represented by the children of trad wives. Over a long enough time scale I think trad wife like subcultures will take over.

Think about it in evolutionary terms. If a mutation shows up that dramatically lowers fertility rate it will be heavily selected against unless it somehow confers an even greater fitness advantage in other areas.

Here we’re dealing with cultural changes associated with the invention of birth control and a massive liberalization of society. These have caused fertility to plummet but don’t really confer much of a fitness advantage (most of the advantage is due to modern medicine which trad wives also have access to). Since culture is pretty strongly heritable (sometimes even more strongly than individual genes, which might only be passed down 50% of the time if only one parent has the gene) we could see a societal takeover by trad wives over the next few centuries.

I think that’s the super rare atomic bomb effect. Basically a gigantic nuke that you have to run away to escape the blast.

The poll left out nonbinary folks who must have all voted for Trump!

It’s the economy. Look at the numbers for voters without a college degree, rural voters, and lower income voters. Trump won all of these groups. In the WaPo exit polls the issues are included, not just the demographics. For voters who think the economy is the most importantly issue and for voters who think the US economy is doing badly: Trump dominated.

The Democrats continue to fail at shedding their reputation for being out of touch with working class Americans. The only income bracket that Harris won was the $100,000+ group. This tells us that the Democrats are an upper middle class and upper class party.

Influencers are the tail that thinks they’re wagging the dog. When they aren’t shilling garbage products and cryptoscams they’re spending all their time trying to find the next trend to chase. Besides the shilling, at their worst they’re merely a sounding board for ideas and issues that are already out there (and have been for a long time).

The biggest mistake the Democrat campaign made was to ignore the plight of working class, non-college educated people. To a group that’s been reeling from inflation and the major setback of COVID lockdowns, the Democrats promised more of the same. That’s not good enough! What good is student loan forgiveness to people who never went to college?

That’s been the problem for the Democrats for decades now. A party that used to call labour unions its base now focuses pretty much exclusively on college-educated middle class and up.

I just had a look at the exit polls. Of the people who said the economy was the most important use, 79% voted for Trump. Of those who think the US’s economy is doing not so good/poor (67% of voters), 69% voted for Trump.

I know lots of people here will sneer at that and Trump seems pretty unlikely to right the ship but he actually promised change whereas the Democrats did not. Promising to keep things the same when 2/3 of voters believe the economy is poor is not going to get the job done.

Can you track down thieves? We’ve had issues with maple syrup heists!

Can you skate and hit a top corner slapshot? If so, yes. Here’s your complimentary Tim’s card! That’s ten free coffees on the house!

If your goal is to make things better, wouldn’t you be best positioned to do that in your own community? Moving to a new place with its own unique set of problems is challenging enough as it is. To hope to make a difference there is going to involve learning about local issues. Unless you mean something more generic, like volunteering in soup kitchens, homeless shelters, literacy programs, etc. which are everywhere and always can use extra help.

I’d assumed that people worried about fallout from the US election are worried more about their own situation: their rights and freedoms, personal safety, and economic situation. Moving to Canada could definitely improve some of those issues while exacerbating others. Housing in Canada (especially in big cities like Toronto and Vancouver, but not at all limited to those cities) is generally much less affordable than the U.S. outside of the big cities there (New York, San Francisco, LA, Seattle). Many people who move here find it very challenging unless they already have a bunch of wealth saved up.

Leftists moving here now are not going to get citizenship in time to vote in the next election. The visa -> PR -> citizenship path takes years and years.